In May I embarked on a low-carb diet. Shortly after choosing to start this, I resumed the “slow carb diet” which was popularized by Tim Ferris when he released his second book, the four hour body. I tried the diet last year after the book first came out, with lackluster results. This time, it worked. (More …)

I get frustrated… a lot. Not genuinely angry, mind you, but suffice to say people often do things that tick me off. For the next 30 days, I will take a different approach. Instead of getting angry or frustrated immediately, I will make my best effort to say “hmm, that’s interesting,” and understand what led to my frustration, as well as the other person’s actions.

As I write this, I see that this is a version of Stephen Covey’s “seek first to understand” habit.

And, I am now typing this on my iPhone 4S, rather than dictating to Siri, who has very interestingly stopped processing my input.

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we’re chickens.”
So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.